Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times | A discussion with Jasbir Puar

On the occasion of the Greek translation of Jasbir Puar’s book, “Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times,” and in the presence of the author and Professor at Rutgers University, New York, we discuss about homonationalism in queer times on Tuesday, June 21st, 19:30 at Pedion tou Areos park. The discussion will be introduced and moderated by Angeliki Sifaki, visiting researcher at Newcastle University, UK and editor of the Greek translation. Short interventions will follow by Eleni Bourou, translator and text editor; Ioannis Rigas, independent researcher; Chloe Kolyri, lecturer and queer psychoanalyst; Giorgos Tsantirakis, psychologist of gender-based violence and torture survivors at Diotima Center, and Kassandra El Najjar, who works at “Positive Voice.” A closing remark by Jasbir Puar herself and a Q&A session with the audience will follow.

Jasbir K. Puar is Professor and Graduate Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, USA. Her most recent book is “The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability” (2017, Duke University Press). Puar is the author of the award-winning “Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times” (2007, Duke University Press), re-issued in an expanded version for its tenth anniversary (2017), which has been translated into Spanish, French and soon in Greek. Puar’s edited volumes include a special issue of ‘GLQ’ (“Queer Tourism: Geographies of Globalization”) and co-edited volumes of ‘Society and Space’ (“Sexuality and Space”), ‘Social Text’ (“Interspecies”) and ‘Women’s Studies Quarterly’ (“Viral”). Puar’s major awards include a 2018 Fellowship from the Palestinian American Research Council, the 2013-14 Society for the Humanities Fellowship at Cornell University, the Edward Said Chair of American Studies 2012-13 at the American University of Beirut, a Rockefeller Fellowship at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center (1999-2000) and a Ford Foundation grant for archival and ethnographic documentation work (2002-2003). Her writings have been translated into Polish, French, German, Croatian, Swedish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Danish, and Greek. Currently Professor Puar is completing her third book, a collection of essays on duration, pace, mobility, and acceleration in Palestine titled “Slow Life: Settler Colonialism in Five Parts.”

Angeliki Sifaki is a Visiting Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, where as a Marie Curie Fellow she has completed her postdoctoral thesis, "Greek Homonationalism: Entanglement of Sexual Politics with Issues of Race and Nationalism in the Case of Gay and Lesbian Movements and Queer Activist Groups in Greece." Angeliki has completed her doctoral thesis, "Greek Lesbian Teachers: School, Nation, Family," at the department of Gender Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

Eleni Bourou is a translator and text editor and contributes regularly to the literary magazine “Teflon.” Recent books translated into Greek by her include Chandra-Talpade Mohanty’s “Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity” (oposito, 2021) and Karen Van Dyck’s “Lifted” (Agra Publications, forthcoming in 2022); and, of course, “Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times” by Jasbir Puar.

Chloe Kolyri is a psychoanalyst, with degrees in Medicine, Psychiatry, and Neurophysiology. A founding member of the Greek anti-psychiatry movement, as well as of the collective on Deleuze-Guattari studies, she has published on queer-gender, Deleuze, and psychoanalysis.

Kassandra is a human being willing to live freely. She currently works for ‘Positive Voice’ organization. In the past she has worked as an interpreter for several not-for-profit organizations, as well as an independent artist and performer, working with various groups and projects.